Peachy
by no escape from reality
Summary: Part Two of Three up. Will Sirius Die a premature death? Will James finally be ale to convince Lily he has really changed? What's up with Tyler? Where are the other marauders? Hmm..
1. Enough is Enough

**Enough is Enough**

"You are infuriating," Lily stated matter-of-factly before turning around in her seat to face the front of the room once again.

Not more than a minute later a bit of parchment flew over her shoulder and landed with a slight _thunk_ on the pages of her text book.

Sighing, she put down her eagle feather quill and opened the parchment. She read it and rolled her eyes, not bothering to respond.

Again, a piece of parchment was launched onto her desk, and again, she neglected to answer.

The third time this happened, however, she spun around, placed all three pieces of parchment on the desk behind her and hissed, "I've got enough parchment, thank you. I don't need yours as well."

James held in his laughter as she turned around once again. He slowly and quietly ripped another piece of parchment from his roll. He balled it up and took aim.

Just as he was about to toss it, however, he was distracted by a swift kick to the back legs of his chair. The small wad of parchment, instead of sailing neatly onto Lily's desk as planned, flew halfway across the room and lodged itself into Professor McGonagall's tight bun.

Behind him, James heard Sirius snort with laughter. James turned and gave a look meant to silence his friend. It had an adverse affect, however, and sent him into hysterics.

"Yes, Mr. Black. Is there something funny about human transformation?"

Sirius nodded his head. "Yes, Professor, actually, there is. I was just imagining someone having parchment for hair."

The professor pursed her lips and replied, "Yes well, there will be plenty of time for that tonight in detention."

----

"What were you thinking?" Lily demanded as they walked out of the classroom, her angry footsteps echoing through the stone corridor. "I can't even imagine what was going through your mind to posses you to throw a piece of parchment at McGonagall!"

"As brilliant as that was," James began smugly, "it was completely unintentional. It was meant for you."

The footsteps stopped.

"You wanted to throw that into my hair?" Lily said, her ears turning pink and slowly progressing to a bright red. "You sure do know the way to a girl's heart." She shook her head and continued on her way to lunch.

"I wasn't going to throw it in your hair," James called after her. "I just wanted it to land on your desk, is all. I wanted to get your attention!"

Lily ignored his comments and continued on to lunch, fuming.

----

"Can you believe," Lily said practically slamming her books down on a table in the library later that evening, "that he thinks that I'm going to go out with him after that?" She ignored the glare from the librarian and continued on. "I mean, honestly. What mature person would flick bits of parchment at people?"

Tyler, not looking up from her essay, nodded sympathetically to everything her friend said.

"I just can't believe that he would honestly think that I would consider it after that stunt he pulled today."

Tyler again nodded her head, sending her dark hair flying.

"I mean, you hear him. He said that he changed. He said that he was a 'better man'." Lily snorted. "Yeah, right."

She plunked down into the seat across from her friend and extracted her own essay from her bag.

"I mean, honetly-" Lily was cut off when Tyler slammed her book shut.

"I'm sorry that you have a guy that likes you. I am, truly. You have no idea. But I'm failing potions and it's the second week of school. Not everyone can be a teacher's pet." Tyler gathered her things and, over her shoulder on the way out called to Lily, "You understand."

Lily rolled her eyes. _Yeah, I understand, all right._

She and Tyler had a touch and go relationship. They had been the best of friends until Lily began hanging out with a few girls from Ravenclaw the year before. Tyler had been jealous even though Lily assured her that nothing had changed between them.

The final straw had come when Lily, unknowingly, dated Tyler's long time crush. The relationship didn't last long though, and Lily was glad that Tyler had not gone out with him. He was nearly as pompous as James Potter, and almost as immature.

After the fight that took place when Lily found out about Tyler's secret, they had stopped speaking, only to start again a few weeks before the end of the term a few months later. Though she had all summer to get over it, Tyler was still a little sore about the subject and often took it out on Lily.

Lily couldn't blame her, but she was beginning to get frustrated with her long time friend. Enough was enough, after all.

Lily glanced up from her charms essay and was surprised to see Sirius Black sitting across the table where Tyler had been not fifteen minutes before.

"Can I help you, Sirius?" She asked politely.

"Well, that's the thing. I was hoping that you would be ever so kind as to let me copy –"

Lily sighed and shook her head. "I'm not letting you copy anything, Sirius. Why don't you go badger Remus for his work? I'm sure that he'd let you."

"Remus is sick, the notes are for him."

"Well, why didn't you just take notes for him?" Lily asked, raising her eyebrows in question.

"My notes are never good enough. He's the god of taking notes. Yours are the only notes that could ever compare."

Lily snorted. "Right, Sirius." She shook her head and reached into her bag. "Fine. But only because it's for Remus and he hasn't been well all week."

Sirius's smile brightened. "Great." He pointed his wand at the parchment containing a neat outline complete with underlined terms and important dates with little stars charmed to shimmer different colors next to them. He muttered a spell under his breath, and instead of duplicating the History of Magic notes that Lily labored over, he set fire to them.

"Sirius!" She shouted before quickly putting out the fire. It was too late, however, and all of her hard work was lost.

"Whoops. I must have been distracted." Sirius said innocently. "Well, I better go. Thanks anyway."

Lily stared at the scorched parchment before her. The edges were charred and all that was left was salvageable was a small section in the middle reading "Goblins often used a style of warfare that was considered barbaric by".

She gathered her things and left, leaving the ruined notes on the table. She marched into the Gryffindor common room and looked around for James.

He was going to be sorry once she found him. After all, who else would get Sirius to set fire to her notes?

----

Hmm…let me know what you think. If you like it, I'll definitely continue it. I think I've got a pretty good idea of what way I want to take this.


	2. The Trouble with Friends

**The Trouble with Friends…**

"I'm flattered that you would think of me, Lily, but I have to admit that Sirius does think for himself on occasion." James smiled and closed his book with a quick snap. "So, you might want to take it up with him."

"I don't buy it." Lily said, her eyes narrowing. "I think that there was something more behind it than Sirius just being cruel."

James shrugged and stretched his arms over his head. "Make of it what you will, Love. I've got quidditch. Tootles."

Lily watched him as he left; her anger was increasing by the second. Why couldn't she say anything to him? Why had she let him treat her that way? Why had she allowed him to speak to her like she was a first year? She was head girl, for crying out loud.

Lily sat in the seat that had previously been occupied by James and put her head down on the table. Her hair formed a curtain around her, keeping the outside world away as she thought back to the train ride home the year before.

_Lily looked up when she heard a knock on the door. When James entered her compartment, she could tell he was nervous. He was fidgeting slightly and he was fussing with his hair more than usual. _

"_Anything you need?" Lily asked, looking at him expectantly._

"_I was hoping we could talk." The words sounded like he had to force them out. She couldn't understand why he was so nervous. They had spoken many times in their years. He unabashedly asked her out an uncountable number of times. _

"_Sure. Have a seat." She gestured to the many empty seats in the compartment and James chose the one across from her._

"_So…" He looked at her, as though she would continue the conversation. She sighed and decided that she had better say something before things got any more awkward._

"_How are you, James?" She asked politely. _

"_I'm good. Thank you. How are you?" His speech seemed almost robotic and his eyes kept going from her face to the door as though he was waiting for someone to burst in at any moment._

"_I'm just peachy. What is it that you wanted to speak to me about?" She probed, hoping that the conversation would be finished by the time they reached King's Cross Station. She had better things to do with her summer vacation than sit around a train station and listen to a boy who gave her very little reason too be civilized to._

"_I was wondering," he started, "if you could tell me why you always shoot me down."_

_Lily smirked. _Are there enough hours in a day? _She wondered to herself. "You're very immature, James. Not in a cute occasional way, either. You very rarely act as though you're sixteen years old."_

_His face fell at those words. "Well, is there anything that I can do to make you think differently of me?"_

"_You could, for starters, stop tormenting people who do nothing to provoke you." James nodded his head, as though saying that he could handle that._

"_The thing about delusions, James, is that the person who is having them believes that they are true." He looked at her curiously, wondering where she was going with that._

"_You see, James, you think that you are the greatest thing to walk through those huge oak doors into Hogwarts. You believe that everyone wants you and that you can have anything you want. You think that you're invincible." Lily smiled and continued on, "You're not though, you know. You're no better than the next person. You should start acting that way."_

_Her words, she realized, may have been a bit harsh, but she wanted to get her point across to him._

_He nodded his head and stood up. "Well, just wait until next September. You'll be surprised at how much I'll have changed. I'm going to grow up this summer, you know."_

_Lily watched him walk out of the compartment and wondered if he really could change, or if the years of pretending to be a god had done their damage._

Not two weeks before James had approached her and professed himself a changed person. "I'm changed now, Lily. I've grown up this summer, just as I said I would." He hadn't even ruffled his hair when he spoke the words.

He looked sincere as he spoke. He looked her in the eye the whole time; his eyes didn't waver or flick from hers once.

And then he began pulling his classic James stunts again. She had caught him humiliating Severus Snape in a fourth floor corridor, he had tossed bits of parchment at Professor McGonagall, and now this. He had enlisted his partner in crime, Sirius, to set fire to all of her hard work. He had some nerve.

"Hey, Lily."

Lily snapped out of her thoughts to find Tyler sitting next to her holding a few pieces of parchment.

"I heard what happened to your notes. You can copy mine." She placed the parchment on the table and Lily smiled and said her thanks.

"I'm sorry about the library." Tyler stood and left before Lily had a chance to reply. She watched her go before pulling a piece of parchment and a quill from her bag to copy the notes.

----

On her way out the portrait hole to go to dinner, Lily passed by James who was just returning from quidditch practice. She thought back to the train ride and then over the two weeks that they had been back in the castle. She shook her head sadly. _Apparently he can't change,_ she thought to herself as she slid into a seat next to Tyler at the Gryffindor Table. _Or maybe he just doesn't care._

The thought of James not caring unnerved her a bit. His incessant nagging had become a part of her life over the last few years.

"You're not still moping around about your notes, are you?" Tyler asked, her voice sounded tired.

"No."

"Good. I have some news for you. I hope that you'll be happy for me." Tyler was being a little cold and Lily couldn't help but notice.

"Oh? I'm sure I will be." When Tyler just smirked and made no move to continue on, Lily urged her. "Well, come on, out with it."

"I got asked to go to Hogsmeade next weekend, you know." Tyler said as though it were something that happened to her every day.

"That's great! Did you say yes? Who is it?" Lily was excited and happy for her friend.

"Derek." Her happiness faded a bit, but she tried to cover it up.

"That's great. I know that you really like him." Derek was the boy that Lily and Tyler had fought about the year before. Lily knew that it wouldn't work out between the two of them, but she kept her mouth shut.

Tyler looked at her critically. _Oh lord, here we go._ Lily thought. She scooped some mashed potatoes onto her plate and pretended to be very interested in the different kinds of gravy available.

In the middle of her speech about the abundance of brown gravy, Tyler stood and left the table. Lily turned and watched her go. She stalked out the doors of the great hall, slinging her bag over her shoulders and not once looking back.

Lily shook her head. It was going to be a rough year.

----

Several weeks into the term, Tyler was still convinced that Lily was jealous of her new boyfriend and still wouldn't say a word to her. She pretended that she didn't hear her in the mornings when Lily tried to make conversation in the dorm, and looked the other way when Lily waved in the hall.

One Saturday a few weeks after their initial falling out, Lily had enough.

She said a simple "Hello" to Tyler in the hall that afternoon in hopes that she might get a nod in return, or even an acknowledgment of her existence. All she got, however, was a cold shoulder.

Lily sat down at a table near the back of the library. She didn't bother to pull out her work because she knew that she wouldn't get anything done. She put her head down on the cold wooden surface and wished that she had someone, anyone, to talk to about her problems before they became so much that she exploded.

She finally stood up and started the journey back to the Gryffindor common room. While she was going out, James was going in.

"Hello, Lily." He said with a quick nod of his head.

She smiled politely and nodded back before going back on her way. He stopped her, however, before she got too far out the door.

"Lily, Tyler asked me to give this to you." He handed her a neatly folded piece of parchment. She took it and thanked him.

"Yeah, well, have a lovely afternoon," he called after her.

Once she was out of his sight, she opened the parchment, hoping that it was a note of reconciliation. It was not.

It was, in fact, not even from Tyler. James had used her as an excuse to get Lily to take the parchment. The thought of it made her angry. Didn't he know that she and Tyler were currently estranged? Did he care at all that he had gotten her hopes up and then tore them down again? _Probably not,_ she thought bitterly.

She looked at the parchment one last time before crumpling it up and tossing it into a potted plant, earning her glares from the surrounding portraits.

_Go out with me, Love._

She thought about those words the whole way back to the common room. Every time she thought them again, they made her a little bit angrier.

Who did he think he was? He wasn't good enough to lick the dirt from her shoes, as far as she was concerned. What gave him the idea that he could just feign civility and frame her just to ask her out in such a degrading way?

----

James stood by the entrance to the library and watched as Lily disappeared around the corner. He suddenly had the urge to go after her and rip the parchment from her hands before she read it.

He didn't know what was wrong with him. He had changed, but then fallen back into his old ways within days. Being around her seemed to drag out the worst in him; he lacked self control when she was near.

His brain went off on a tangent and reverted back to its old ways. It went back to the ways she detested, the ways that had gotten him into this situation to begin with.

This was only half of his problem though. She seemed to think that he was behind a number of things that he hadn't been.

The first weekend back, she had found him and the other Marauders corning Snape in an empty corridor. While he had not been actively participating, he had done nothing to stop Sirius from carrying on. He had, as Lily pointed out, abused his powers as Head Boy by neglecting to enforce the rules for his friends.

He could see how she was upset about that and he was willing to take the consequences and the repercussions that went along with his lack of action.

What he couldn't understand, though, was why should would not listen to him when he tried to defend himself against her other accusations.

He had not intentionally thrown a piece of parchment at Professor McGonagall, and he had certainly not encouraged Sirius to set fire to her notes. She wouldn't hear any of that though, and she remained set in her view of him as being immature and unsympathetic.

He was rapidly losing hope of ever convincing her that he had actually changed and getting her to give him a chance.

James entered the library and sat down at a table by a window over looking the forest. _What do all of those things have in common?_ He wondered to himself.

A small voice in the back of his head seemed to urge him to think of Sirius. He immediately rejected that idea, but then when the thought came back around, he thought a little harder on it before dismissing it.

_Sirius was the one tormenting Snape. Sirius kicked my chair causing me to throw the parchment at McGonagall. Sirius ignited Lily's notes,_ he thought. With every thought that came, he wanted more and more to strangle his friend.

----

Ah, Part two of three. Will James find a way to convince Lily to change her mind about him? Will Sirius die a premature death? What is going on with Tyler? And just where are the rest of the Marauders? Hmm…Questions, questions.


End file.
